Communications of the ACM

Articles
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p.10 - Parlog86 and the Dining Logicians (G. A. Ringwood)
The particular complexities of concurrent programming are illustrated by the dining philosophers problem and solved by Parlog86.

p.26 - A View of the Origins and Development of Prolog (Jacques Cohen)
The birth of Prolog is explored from a language processing perspective to reinforce the thesis that creative computer languages are "discovered" rather than "invented".

p.38 - The Early Years of Logic Programming (Robert A. Kowalski)
A personalized account of the influences and inspirations that led to the logic programming language known universally as Prolog is recalled by a member of the founding team.

Computing Practices
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p.44 - A Faire Share Scheduler (J. Kay and P. Lauder)
Unlike centralized processing unit schedulers that in practice allocate resources fairly, a fair Share scheduler helps spread the load among its users.

p.56 - Anatomy of a Compact User Interface Development Tool (Jack W. Stott and Jeffrey E. Kottemann)
PANES, a flexible information management tool, is specially designed to integrate forms-oriented applications with windows-oriented capabilities.

Research Contributions
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p. 68 - Computer Technology and Jobs: An Impact Assessment Model (Ron Weber)
According to results of a research study, the effects of computer technology on-the-job can be examined via a set of underlying generic job characteristics.

p. 78 - Computer Backup Pools, Disaster Recovery, and Default Risk (Yehuda Kahane, Seev Neumann, and Charles S. Tapiero)
By sharing the ownership and services of computer backup pools, members are offered protective measures against computer breakdown and disaster recovery.

Departments
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p.1 - Authors
p.2 - President's Letter
p.4 - ACM Forum
p.84 - Calendar of Events
p.87 - Calls for Papers
p.90 - ACM News
p.92 - General News and Notes
p.94 - Information for Authors

About the cover
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This month's cover is inspired by G. A. Ringwoos's article on page 10, that tells of a programming language that could help five hungry monks learn how to live and eat peacefully with only five chopsticks.
Cover by Angelica Group, Ltd.; Illustration by Jeff Kronen.